Here's Where It Gets Interesting - I Won't Shut Up with Ally Henny

Episode Date: June 16, 2023

Writer Ally Henny joins Sharon today to talk about Bruno. But in this context, Bruno–always around, but only talked about in hushed tones–is race. Ally and Sharon have a candid conversation about the pitfalls of Respectability Politics and how white people can do better when it comes to getting uncomfortable in conversations about race. Ally’s new book, I Won’t Shut Up: Finding Your Voice When the World Tries to Silence You, is a great place to start if you are looking to understand the ways in which racism persists in America today. Special thanks to our guest, Ally Henny, for joining us today. You can preorder I Won’t Shut Up here! Hosted by: Sharon McMahon Guest: Ally Henny Executive Producer: Heather Jackson Audio Producer: Jenny Snyder Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hello, friends. Welcome. Thank you so much for being here today. I am chatting today with author Allie Henney, who has written a book that comes out on June 20th called I Won't Shut Up. I really love this conversation about being exactly who you are. So let's dive in. I'm Sharon McMahon, and here's where it gets interesting. I am really excited to be joined today by Ellie Henney. Thank you so much for being here. Thank you for having me. I read your book, and you have such a fantastic writing style. I was engaged from the very first page and your book is called, I Won't Shut Up, Finding Your Voice When the World Tries to Silence You. And I would love to, first of all, just have you give everybody a really high level idea about what your new book is about? Well, it's kind of

part personal memoir, which I don't really like to say that, but I guess that's the truth of it, because I mean, I'm under 40 years old. So it kind of seems weird to be like, oh, I wrote my memoirs at 30 something years old. But it's part memoir, part social justice book talking about race and racism in America and my experiences with race and racism in America, particularly in this small rural predominantly white town that I grew up in as well as some of the predominantly white cities that I grew up in, or that I was a young adult and an adult in. And so yeah, it kind of weaves my personal narrative in with those themes. There's no shade in writing a memoir under age 40. You can always write another one, Allie. You can write another one in 10 years and another one in 20. You can write

five more. Yeah, that's true. It just, it kind of feels a bit self-important, which mine is very, this very specific. It's not just a retelling of my whole life. Right. It's not the autobiography of Allie Honey. Like it's just sharing about your personal experiences as it relates to one topic. And maybe in the future, you'll share personal experiences as it relates to one topic. And maybe in the future, you'll share personal experiences as it relates to a different topic. So I don't think it's like self-important at all. I enjoyed the personal portion of the book. So listen, let's define a couple of terms because some people, these are going to be new terms for them. You talk about in the book, this concept of respectability politics. And some people are like, what's wrong with that? Why shouldn't we be respectable? Or maybe they never heard that term before, but somebody listening to this is going

to be like, I don't even know what that means. So I would love to hear from you. First of all, what is respectability politics? And then secondly, I'd love to hear your experiences and thoughts on what they are. Yeah, so respectability politics is essentially the type of behaviors that people who are part of historically marginalized groups, that they engage in, in order to be seen as acceptable or respectable to people in the dominant culture. So for instance, racial minorities might assimilate to white cultural norms, white cultural standards of dress, of speech, that sort of thing. And it is taking things that might be seen about one's culture and saying, oh, well, that's bad because it doesn't fit into the status quo. And so rejecting aspects of that. So an example that I

can give from Black culture is whenever you hear people talk about, well, yeah, people should pull up their pants. So don't sag your pants, you know, speak proper English, that sort of thing is often whenever you hear another Black person saying that there's like this famous, you know, pound cake speech that Bill Cosby gave that was sort of that, that was that sort of ethos. And so essentially, it is people wanting to conform to dominant cultural norms. And then also not just for themselves, they're engaging in a politic of respectability for themselves. But then there's also an element of enforcing that on other people or wanting other people

from your group to do those things and then putting them down and seeing them, treating them as less acceptable as people because they speak in vernacular, they use slang, and that sort of thing. There's a lot of different ways that respectability politics can show up. You can see this all the way back in United States history, and you can see it in a broad cross-section of areas, even going so far back as the United States' relationship with Native American tribes, we regarded some tribes as quote-unquote civilized because they were willing to adhere to European cultural norms. Exactly. And everybody else that wouldn't do that,

wouldn't change their method of dress, wouldn't change their religion, wouldn't speak English, wouldn't conform to European cultural norms. They were savages. I mean, and I'm saying that in air quotes, of course, but those were literally the terms that people used, savages and civilized. And so this is something that is very, very deeply rooted in United States history. And you just gave a great example. That's one more example there. We could probably come up with 350 more. And sometimes people criticize people from history. I'm thinking about like Booker T. Washington, who was frequently criticized for engaging in things like respectability politics, for trying to act or conform with the sort of like dominant European cultures. But I would love to hear from your

perspective why that is a problem. What is wrong with respectability politics? Well, there's a lot wrong with it. I think that chiefly, respectability politics is not going to help you. It's not actually going to save you. You're going to experience racism no matter how you dress, no matter how you speak. At the end of the day, you are still a Black person. And so that doesn't make you inferior. That doesn't whatever. But at the end of the day, when we're still going to experience racism and we see that now, yes, maybe being able to speak quote unquote general or standard English, that might open some doors for you, but at what cost, at what, at what price. And so it often comes with a, with a high price of losing your sense of self, of losing your identity,

of losing your voice even. Yeah, I love what you had to say in the book. You said, what respectability does is steal from us. It steals our esteem for who we are as Black people, and it replaces it with a sense of shame. It makes us ashamed of our communities. It makes us ashamed of our vernacular. It makes us ashamed of our communities. It makes us ashamed of our vernacular. It makes us ashamed of our culture, the food, art, beliefs, and everything else that makes Blackness unique. It makes us ashamed of any aspect of our culture that doesn't jibe with the mandates of whiteness. And it even makes us ashamed of one another. That would really just give me a lot to think about that not only do you talk about how respectability, quote unquote, respectability, we're talking about respectability

in this specific context, not just people who are respectable, but the respectability politics in this specific context, but also the damage that that can do to a community and how it robs a community of its own culture and pride in its own culture. And I just, that gave me a lot to think about. This made me chuckle. Okay. The part where you talked about the best things, the highest things, the most wonderful, amazing things in white culture are the quietest. It's like the museums, like silence. You think about having tea with the queen. It's like, would you raise your voice in that context? Never.

You would not even want to clink your teacups. Yeah. Talk about like the things that are the paragon of white culture. Yes. You have to, it's like silence is expected. You have to be quiet. Yes. Be quiet in here. What are the places where the top tier people, when I say top tier, I mean people who we esteem as being wealthy and educated, they go to places where you have to be quiet. Yes. The nice restaurants are quiet. The beautiful museums are very quiet. But I loved the juxtaposition of that with you owning who you are and you say, just like unashamedly saying like that, I'm not participating in that.

So I would love to hear a little bit more about how you experience respectability politics and maybe what that has done to you personally, or how maybe you have experienced this dominant paradigm of like, here's how you should be acting. of even credibility sometimes for people because they aren't able to code switch. They're not able to change how they are because they don't know. They maybe like have an understanding of dominant cultural ideas and norms, but they don't necessarily know how to do those things. It's not maybe the, like for instance, with speech patterns, it's maybe not something that they really like know how to turn on and they know all the rules of grammar and pronunciation and diction and all that kind of stuff. And so then they don't get the opportunities,

the doors of people who maybe speak African American vernacular English, I've seen where they don't get the opportunities or the people that come from families who there might be a long and well-known history of incarceration and interaction with the criminal justice system, where then the people who, you know, their children, their descendants, their kids, their grandkids, their siblings, whatever, where those people are denied opportunities because of where they come treat as worthy of respect and dignity. That can often make for some tension kind of within the Black community. But then in our interaction with white people, which I think is probably the more salient part of this discussion, what it does is I think that it aids and abets racism. So like you can sit, like white people can sit and be like, well, you know, this person over here. So you have Jimmy

over here who I can understand him whenever, whenever he talks, he's, he uses English in a way that I can understand it. Now, mind you not correct English. Cause there's not, there's lots of, there's no such thing as correct English. And I think we have to decolonize our minds about that, that there's a lot of different ways to be and a lot of different ways to speak and a lot of different ways to be a person. might say, well, you know, I'm going to promote Jimmy because Jimmy, he speaks well. He's articulate, quote unquote, which is dog whistle racism, but that's a whole other different. He doesn't dress like some of these thugs out here. You know, he comes from a good family. He's respectful because they always have to say that we're respectful, which is just a weird thing to say that you automatically expect respect from people. It is because it has this connotation that I am somebody you need expect respect from people. It is because it has this connotation

that I am somebody you need to respect. Exactly. And so I then evaluate you as being a good person because you respect me in the way that I believe that you should. Exactly. That's the subtext of that. You treat me the way that I think that I should be treated. And often there is an element of deference exactly so you you treat me so whenever so whenever i hear

like oh this person's respectful or whatever there's almost like an aspect of expected deference and so that just that just really bothers me because it's like oh so you're expecting people to be deferential to you we're like i would never say about one of my friends, like, he's so respectful. Like, I would never say that. Like, what, like, we're friends. Like, I think, you know, respect, yes, it's a mutual thing. It flows, it can flow laterally as it does flow vertically and stuff. But at the same time, that's just a weird descriptor. But anyway, people that, you know, somebody might say, a manager at a job might say, oh, you know, Jimmy's respectful, he's this, he's that, he's a third, and then promote Jimmy, but then you've got Daron over here who maybe doesn't speak standard English, he maybe, you know, he's in dress code, but his dress

is, you know, he's maybe got, he's maybe got a hat, he's maybe got this and that and so it's like oh well he's the way that he dresses and and maybe just you know Duran isn't deferential to the white manager in the same way that that Jimmy is and so then Duran doesn't get the opportunities that Jimmy got now Duran could be just as qualified just as educated just as whatever But then respectability politics says, well, you know, we want this person. So then the other aspect of it too is respectability politics. Again, you know, the racist aspect of this is that oftentimes people who are seen as respectable to white people are often seen as respectable because they don't push back against racism. So again, with Jimmy and Daron, maybe Jimmy, racism happens. Oh, well, I don't see color.

Well, I don't, you know, I don't think about this. Like the whole entire environment of the workplace can be racist. They can be experiencing microaggressions, but Jimmy over here, Jimmy don't even see color. And so the, so the manager would be like, well, Jimmy says he doesn't see color. He's not complaining. But then Duran's over here with a bunch of HR complaints saying, I've experienced this, I've experienced that, I've experienced the third. That respectability can play into something like that also. It seems like people who are hell-bent on perpetuating white supremacy, first of all, they don't like to be told they're racist, right? That is very offensive.

Nobody wants to be like, I'm not racist. I have personally never met anybody who says I'm racist. You know what I mean? They won't say that to your face and they will get really, really upset if you say that anything they said or did, well, that's really racist. That is deeply offensive. Yeah. A lot of white people treat it like being called a racist is worse than any racial slur that anybody can say. I have had white people be on, like, be on that before. And it's like, no, like, me just saying that you're racist or that you did something racist, that's not the end of the world because you can change that. Yeah, you can be like, dang, I did not mean that and I did not realize that and I'm going to correct that moving forward. Those are behaviors that you can correct. But I've noticed this trend where anytime somebody who is very comfortable with their deep-seated white supremacy,

they think that race is not a topic that we should talk about. They think that anytime you bring up race, your goal is to be confrontational. It's like, why are you bringing this up? Why are you bringing this up? You're making it worse by talking about it. And I really do think that there is, I'm sure you've experienced this, this sort of like deep-seated notion that if you ignore it, it will go away. And the best way to deal with it is to ignore it. And first of all, is that true in your opinion? Yeah, I've seen, heard, experienced all of what you said, where people think that talking about racism creates more racism. I actually call that like, without getting too deep into explanations, this is something

that's not in the book. This is bonus content. But I actually call this like the terraforming fallacy. So like, you know, in science fiction, there's this concept of like, if people are going to go to like a new planet that doesn't really have any like plants or whatever, they can terraform. So they can basically bring life to this planet or whatever. And so there's this fallacy that like I call like the terraforming fallacy, like with racism, where it's basically like racism doesn't exist unless you create it. And like, and you create racism by talking about racism, because if we didn't talk about it, it wouldn't exist. Like you're creating it by talking about it. And so I have encountered

that. And I think that that type of thinking is problematic. I think the root system of it is that white people are very uncomfortable talking about race. White folks are socialized not to talk about race. And I think that even the better way to say that is white people are socialized because white people think about and talk about race a lot, but they are socialized to think that talking about it overtly and thinking about it overtly and making it obvious that you're thinking about it and talking about it. White folks are socialized that that's raw. So you don't have to think about as a white person, if I do this, that, and the third, then this will happen and I can have

negative consequences come to me. You generally don't have to think about that in any facet of your life. So the idea then that someone would come to you and say, well, you know, you need to think about the words that you're using, or you maybe, you know know this thing is insensitive it creates this general sense of racial discomfort because it's like racism is like you know it's like bruno it's like we don't talk about it like we just we just let it bruno's there all up in all up in the house all up in the structure of the house trying to whatever lives in the walls. Bruno, like racism literally lives in the walls. Like Bruno lives in the walls. And people know that he's there. They know he's there.

But we don't talk about Bruno. No, no, no, no. We have to have a whole song telling you not to talk about the thing that we know is there. Exactly. Exactly. And that is exactly how white people deal with racism. We don't talk about this, except for this, you know, we're going to sing this whole song about how we don't talk about it. And it's always the same song and dance. But at the end of the day,

what happens is the slightest amount of racial discomfort causes y'all to melt down. It's like, see, this is why we don't talk about this. And it's something as simple as, yeah, you know, maybe the mascot for your favorite sports team shouldn't be a Native American or shouldn't, you know, use slurs for Native American people.

That's insensitive. Y'all completely flip all the way the heck out about that. And it's like, this is a very minor thing. In the grand scheme of everything that could possibly go wrong in anybody's life, this name of a sports team changing is not anywhere on the radar. But you mentioned something like that and people, they flip out, they get so upset because it makes them uncomfortable because then they have to look

at the thing. And then the other thing that happens too within this is that white people want you to know that they are innocent of racism. They're not like the other white people. They give what I call like a racial alibi. Everyone has to give their alibi. Well, I was never a slave holder. My best friend is Black. I had a Black teacher growing up. It's whatever.

Like there's all these different things that white folks throw out as a reason, as evidence. We're supposed to accept it as evidence that they're not racist. And then we're just supposed to accept that and move on. Like, oh, okay. Sorry. Oh, you have a black friend. Oh, my bad. My mistake. You couldn't possibly. Your neighbor down the hall in your dorm in college, his mom was black. Oh, you know what? You absolutely cannot be racist. You have a color TV. You can't possibly, you can't, I have four Black tires on my car. I can't possibly be racist. Sometimes I colored with a Black crayon when I was in kindergarten. I am not racist. Exactly. Like I can't, I cannot possibly be racist. Rather than just sitting with

the discomfort of somebody said that I did something that was racist, because sometimes it's like, you know, people aren't even saying you're racist and people just completely, you know, they flip the heck out about it. And so that's something that makes it very difficult to talk about race and to talk about racism because you have people who are constantly muting the TV. They keep changing the channel. They keep distracting from what's happening and that's what happens with that. Yeah, totally. It's really hard to have meaningful conversations or to make meaningful progress if one side keeps pretending that they can't hear the other side of like, I'm not talking about that. Mute. Why are you bringing this up to me?

Mute. It is really, really difficult to make any kind of progress if one side refuses to have any kind of conversation about it. And I think you're absolutely right that most white people feel very uncomfortable talking about race. They don't like to hear about it from anybody. They don't like to hear about it from me. They definitely don't like to hear about it from you. There's this idea of like, just drop it. Oh my gosh, just stop bringing that up. As if it were the past. That's what always gets me. I mean, like there's racist,

I've had conversations with people, even people that like, people that I've grown up with. We were in the same class. We attended the same school. We were in all the same history classes, had all the same history teachers were in all the same history classes had all the same history teachers read all the same history books or whatever yet somehow they came out with the knowledge that racism was over it's over i literally had someone that was like oh my gosh, I didn't realize that there was still racism. And I'm just like, what? Like, but I mean, how?

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your fifth grade teacher. First of all, I really related to some aspects of this chapter. I was always the tallest child. I was always the tallest. People were like, how old is she? I was taller than all the boys, taller than my teachers. And I was also a really good student like you were. You were voted most scholarly. I can relate to that as well. But you mentioned in the chapter about how Mrs. Donaldson made you feel. And I love what you said. You said, in Mrs. Donaldson's class, I felt like a supernova giving off its brightest light before being sucked into the abyss. Mrs. Donaldson treated me like a star that was among the biggest and brightest in the galaxy of her classroom. Everywhere else, I was too tall, too loud, too opinionated,

and way too much. But Mrs. Donaldson made me feel as if there was always enough room for me. And I loved that as a longtime teacher. I loved that. And I would love to hear, what did she do? What did she do that made you feel like you could be exactly who you were, that you didn't need to modify? You could just be who you were? Yeah. I mean, I think that she was just really supportive and encouraging of me. Whenever I would share in class, you share the things that I knew, she was always enthusiastic to hear those things. And it wasn't just, you know, all like, oh, yes, you're so great, whatever. I mean, there were times even, you know, whenever she was like, hey, you should do this differently. Like, I mean, I remember like experimenting with my

handwriting, like it was like, you think, you know, middle school kid, late elementary middle school kids do sometimes. There was a point whenever she was like my cursive had become maybe somewhat illegible at this point and so I did well on the spelling test but she was like she wrote me a note that was like yeah you're trying to make your writing too cute and it's hard to read and like um and so she knew that I knew how to spell the words and she was able to just to decipher it but she was just like yeah like you know you might get marked down next time because this is hard to read. So it was like, oh, okay. Like, you know, so it wasn't just all affirmation and like boxes of chocolate and bouquets of flowers or whatever. But ultimately, yeah, she just made me, she made me feel, made me feel good and made

me feel like I was, like I was important, like I was somebody. I love that. What advice do you have for somebody who has spent their life being told they're too loud or they're too much? What advice would you give them? I would tell them that you're not too loud. People just don't like what you have to say. And so it's too loud to them. I have a six-year-old, just turned six-year-old at the beginning of this year. And she's in this phase now where anything that we say to her, and I mean, I can, like, I can be whispering. I can be, you know, like, this is what you need to do.

And it's too loud. Like, she literally, she's like, no, it's too loud. What she, and I've tried to tell her, like, it's not that I'm too loud. It's that you don't like what I'm saying. What I'm saying is hurting your feelings. And I'm not mean. I'm not, you know, I'm not, I'm not like you calling around her name or being mean to her or anything. Sometimes it's past your bedtime. You need to get in bed. Or no, we are not going to throw food. I'm there giving her affirmation of what needs to be done and what the expectations and stuff are. But for her,

it's too loud. And so sometimes you might be saying something, you might be calling people on their nonsense. And for them, it's too loud. And it's too loud because they're not doing the right thing. So just keep on keeping on. And if you're too loud, tell them to put in some earplugs and keep saying what you're saying. And don't let anybody try to shut you up. Don't let anybody tell you that you're taking up too much space. Especially, you know, as a Black woman, you probably, as a person from a marginalized community, you probably are not taking up too much space. That's just the real of it. You're not taking up too much space. you're not taking up too much space. You're probably taking up way less space than anyone else is taking up. In fact, and there have been studies to that to bear that out to that effect, that you probably are not taking up too much space. So just keep being you and keep doing you and keep loving yourself and don't and don't let them steal your voice to let them steal your shine. steal your voice, to let them steal your shine. It's so hard sometimes. When people tell you you're too much, dial it back. And you've talked about this in the book quite a bit,

how you frequently felt like you were too loud, too much, too tall, too smart, too much, too many, all the things. And that this is a common sentiment among women, but it's also a common sentiment among black women that it's just, it's too much. Yes. So when I hear you say that people who are telling you you're too much, what they, or you're too loud, what they really mean is I don't like what you're saying. It's not that you're actually too loud because if I liked what you were saying, I'd want you to say it louder. That feels bad to hear, I would imagine. I would imagine it feels like they don't like what I'm saying. How do I keep moving forward? How do I keep using my voice when so many people are telling me they don't like what I'm saying. What would you say to somebody in

that scenario where they just feel like, I don't know if I have it in me to keep saying it when everybody is telling me that it's wrong? You know, that's a great question. And I think, you know, some of this is specific to the situation that you're in, because sometimes, you know, there are some situations that we can get out of. There's some situations that we can be like, you know, I'm going to change scenery. But I think that one thing that is important is to get people around you who are for you. Sometimes it might be you are straight up in the wrong room. Like you are in the, them people ain't going to listen to you. Like you have, you've been saying it, you have been preaching it, you've been saying it, you have been preaching it,

you've been screaming it, you've been shouting it from the rooftop. And really as a Black woman, as a woman of color, really what needs to happen is for a white man to come in and say the same thing and then they'll get it. And so sometimes you need to know when, need to know when to hold them, need to know when to hold them, need to know when to walk away and know when to run. So there's sometimes whenever you just have to count your losses and say, you know what, this isn't working. And even if it means finding a new job, even if it means transferring schools, even if it means moving to a different community or getting involved with different things, go where your voice is welcome. And if you're not able to do that, if you're not able, because not everybody has the option

to leave, you need to find people with whom you share an identity or have overlap in your identity. And you need to find those people and let those people fill you up. Let those people speak life into you, encourage you, tell you that you're not tripping, you aren't messing things up. And maybe if you are tripping, they can tell you, yeah, girl, you're tripping, and set you on the right path. And sometimes that's what's needed. I love that, that it's actually not your job to convince the rest of the world to love you. That is an exercise in futility. That is what you need to do is find the people who do and let the other people be the haters

that they want to be. Because it's actually not your job to be the idiot whisperer, right? It's actually not your job to fix all of their stupid. That's not on you. You can only control yourself. And so if that means you get up and leave the room where you're not wanted, that's how you can control the situation. I think it's actually just really wise advice that if we spend our whole lives

trying to like chase after people that we would just really want you to love me so much, that is a terrible way to live your life actually. Yes, it definitely, it absolutely is. And I think that, you know, bringing that even into race and racism, some of us spend our whole entire lives seeking white affirmation, where there is none to be found, where they are never going to say, oh, yeah, you know, you are just as this as somebody else. There's some situations that we find ourselves in that we're not going to receive the affirmation from white culture, from white-dominated institutions, whatever the situation may be. We're simply not going to find that. And so it is, you know, I agree. I think it is an

exercise in futility for us to continue to seek that. And sometimes we have to make our own way and make our own spaces for ourselves and seat people around the table with us who are going to give us what before we wrap it up, maybe somebody is listening to this who is a white woman. Chances are good the person listening to this is a white woman. Chances are good that's who it is. Who is like, first of all, I don't want to be part of the problem. I don't want my Black co-workers to feel unwelcome in my presence. I don't want my Black students to leave my classroom feeling like it's just full of microaggressions. I don't want to be part of that problem. What advice might you give somebody to consider? What's something you might ask them to consider when they are

thinking about how can I create an inclusive and welcoming thing, a church, a classroom, a workplace, a friendship? What advice might you give somebody who wants to be welcoming and inclusive? The first piece of advice I would give them is to read my book. And I don't mean that just like to plug, but I think that as much as Black women can maybe find themselves and find their stories, I think that white people also need to do the work of finding themselves in my book and finding the white people, for want of a better phrase, like the various antagonists that show up in my story. protagonists that show up in my story, finding yourself in that, finding your institution in that, finding people that you maybe work with or whatever within that. There are some pieces of advice within there that I think that can be kind of, you know, reverse engineered, if you would, to help white people to be able to understand and to do better. So yeah, I don't say that like glibly, like buy my book, you know, to plug, but that I think

that that's a legitimate thing. The other thing that I would say is that white people, people who are parts of institutions, that sort of thing, it's important to look at where there is power and who has the voice, whose voices are there. It's not just enough to give people a seat at the table, right? But who actually gets to decide what's on the menu? Whose food is on the menu? If you were, who is choosing the table settings? Who's placing people at their spot in the table? Whose house is the table in? And to make it a little bit less metaphorical, you've got to look at yourself and at your institution and see who is actually speaking into it, who's actually building it, who actually has the power to do that, who has the influence, and you see, where you see, well, it's, there's not a lot of diversity in that aspect. Start to build diversity there. And whenever you feel yourself

coming up with excuses of, well, we just, there's just not anybody that's at that level yet. There's just not this, there's just not, there's just not that. a lot of times white people are given so much the benefit of the doubt and they're able to be the ceo of a fortune 500 company at 25 years old i don't know if that's ever happened or not but you know what i mean where it's like oh you know white people will give other white people a chance you can take a chance on somebody who probably is made way more qualified than you actually think that they are because they're so, when we get into systemic racism, that's like a whole other conversation. But oftentimes, white institutions don't see Black people as being qualified whenever they, and you can hold up parallel

the CVs, the resumes, whatever it is. And so I think that sometimes, you know, white folks, you just got to step out. And maybe you make a mistake and that's okay. And so I think that sometimes, you know, white folks, you just got to step out and maybe you make a mistake and that's okay. And maybe you hire somebody or you platform somebody or whatever, and it's a mistake. Do it again. Try it again. Because y'all would give white people countless chances. You would never say, oh, well, I'm never hiring another white man to do that ever again. You would never say that. Like you would never be like, oh, well, we tried having a white male pastor at our church, and it just didn't work. But there are people who would do that of like, yeah, we tried the diversity hire,

and it just wasn't the quality. They just didn't, whatever. People will do that with quote unquote diversity, but then won't think twice about giving whiteness unlimited access, unlimited chances, unfettered opportunity. That's a great point. That's a really good point that we give unqualified people a chance all the time. But if we're going to hire somebody or elevate somebody to a new position,

and that person is a person of color, we're much less likely to give them the chance. They better be like so overqualified for this entry level position. Whereas we'll give, we'll give that job to our like 17 year old nephew who doesn't show up half the time. Uh, you know what I'm saying? It's like in the office where Michael Hiles, 17 year old nephew who doesn't show up half the time. You know what I'm saying? It's like in the office where Michael Hiles hires his nephew and everybody's like, dear God, get this guy out of here.

Yes. Yes. It's exactly, is exactly like that. Yes. Allie, thank you so much for being here today. This was a really fascinating conversation. I think people are going to take a lot out of your book I really enjoyed reading it and I'm really grateful

for your time today yes well thank you for having me on Allie Heddy's book I Won't Shut Up comes out on June 20th you can either pre-order it or grab a copy today wherever you prefer to buy books. I'll see you again soon. This show is researched and hosted by me, Sharon McMahon. Our executive producer is Heather Jackson. Our audio producer is Jenny Snyder. And if you enjoyed this episode, would you consider leaving us a rating or review on your favorite podcast platform?

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